Cleveland crime family

The Cleveland crime family is an American Mafia crime family active in Cleveland, Ohio and the greater Cleveland area, mostly active from the 1920s to the 1980s. In the early 1900s, the four Lonardo brothers and seven Porrello brothers, all immigrants from Sicily, became robbers and extortionists in Cleveland, establishing the family.

During the 1920s, the family engaged in bootlegging during Prohibition, but the Lonardos and Porrellos became rivals. On 13 October 1927, Cleveland boss Joseph Lonardo and his brother John were ambushed and killed by Angelo Porrello's gunmen during a card game at a barbershop, and Porrello became the family's boss and a local corn sugar baron. However, the remaining Lonardo loyalists formed the Mayfield Road Mob under Frank Milano, who allied himself with the Jewish Purple Gang against the main family. On 5 July 1930, Porrello was killed at a sitdown with Milano, and the new boss Vincenzo Porrello was assassinated three weeks later.

In 1931, Milano led the family into the "National Crime Syndicate", and he became a member of The Commission in 1932. In 1932, Milano had the last of the Porrellos murdered, and he remained boss until 1935, when he fled to Mexico to evade tax evasion charges. Alfred Polizzi took over as boss, reigning until he retired in 1944. John T. Scalish then began his 32-year reign, and the family developed important alliances, as well as expanding into California, Florida, and Las Vegas. After Scalish's death in 1976, James T. Licavoli took over the family and warred with Irish Mob boss Danny Greene over control of crime in the city. In 1977, Greene was killed in a car bombing, but the bloody war drew police attention to the family's operations. Licavoli was sent to prison for Greene's murder in 1982, and his successor as boss, Angelo Lonardo, was imprisoned in 1984 and turned states. The family disintegrated to the point that, by the 1990s, none of its living members were living outside of prison, and the family became defunct.